Forum Objectives: Write a rough draft for your week 7 analysis paper and provide some reflections about that draft. Provide peer review of reflective letters and, if desired, drafts.

This week you are submitting your week 7 analysis paper. In order to get ready to do that, this forum gives you the opportunity to do some reflection about that paper and share those reflective thoughts in the form of a “Dear Reader” letter. This can be thought of as a cover letter to go with your essay. Note: You won’t be asked to submit this with your assignment.

Read this article, “Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You Thinking?,” which is linked here. Then draft a letter to your reader and make it your initial post in this forum. Use the following questions to help you write this Dear Reader letter.

• My intentions for this essay were…
• I wanted the paper to successfully do this….(talk about purpose and effects)
• I imagine that my target audience looks like this…
• The process I used to build this draft involves these steps…
• I arrived at the topic and narrowed it in the following way…
• My pre-writing steps involved the following…
• Challenges I faced included these…
• Pleasant surprises I encountered in the process were…
• I made a few/many changes as I went along and they were…
• I had to make some decisions that related to…
• The work we’ve done in previous forums helped me in the following way(s)…
• The primary take-away I want my reader to have from this paper is…
• My suggestions to others writing a similar paper would be these…

If you want to, you can post your draft essay in the Writer’s Circle forum this week, so your peers can look at your paper if they want to. The Writers’ Circle is an ungraded forum that provides a central location for those who want to share their drafts with others.

*** Since you are all majoring in different fields of study, and some of you may be using APA, Chicago/Turabian, or MLA for your essay format and citations, please tell me in your post which notation style you are using. The final submission must be correctly formatted with citations.***

Responses to Other Students’ Dear Reader letters

When you respond to the initial posts of others, look carefully at their Dear Reader letters.

• Ask them questions about why they made the reflective comments they did.
• If a peer posts his/her draft in the Writers’ Circle and you read it, provide feedback about the relationship between the Dear Reader letter and the draft. Do the statements in the letter match the draft?
• Identify where you see similarities and differences between the peer’s letter and yours. Ask questions to explore those differences.

Responses to Other Students’ Drafts

If you choose to review others’ drafts, these questions can help with writing your feedback.

• Does the essay have a good thesis statement?
• Do the supporting paragraphs talk about/illustrate/justify the main idea?
• Is there a counterargument and rebuttal paragraph that talks about the other side and a rebuttal paragraph that rebuts the other side?
• Are there any grammar errors?
• Does the essay have a good introduction paragraph and a good conclusion paragraph?
• Does the essay use 3rd person only with no signs of 1st or 2nd (unless sharing a personal story as one of the supporting points)?
• Is research used well and cited correctly?
• Is the essay format correct for the style they’re using?